The Cat Who Turned On And Off

20

Qwilleran heard Ben Nicholas leave the house, and shortly afterward the downstairs buzzer sounded, and Mary Duckworth arrived with a fur parka thrown over a skyblue corduroy jumpsuit.

She examined the stiff blond hair.

"Know what it is?" Qwilleran asked.

"A bristle. From some kind of brush." "It's a whisker," he corrected her, "from some kind of cat. I found it on Ben's living room sofa. Either my two rascals have found a way to get into the apartment next door, or the spirit of Mathilda Spencer is getting pretty cheeky." Mary examined the cat whisker. "It's mottled — white and gray." "It obviously belongs to Yum Yum. Koko's are pure white." "Have you any idea how they could get through the wall?" Qwilleran beckoned her to follow as he led the way to the dressing room. "I've checked out the bathroom. The wall is solid tile. The only other possibility is in here — behind these bookshelves." Koko followed them into the dressing room and rubbed his jaw ardently against the books on the lower shelf.

"Beautiful bindings!" Mary said. "Mrs. Cobb could sell these to decorators for several dollars apiece." There was a yowl from Koko, but it was a muffled yowl, and Qwilleran looked down in time to see a tail tip disappearing between two volumes — in precisely the spot where he had removed the bound copies of The Liberator.

"Koko, come out!" he ordered. "It's dusty back there." "Yow!" came the faint reply.

Mary said, "He sounds as if he's down a deep well." The man attacked the bookshelf with both hands, pulling out volumes and tossing them on the floor. "Bring the flashlight, Mary. It's on the desk." He flashed the light toward the back wall, and its beam picked up an expanse of paneling similar to the fireplace wall in the living room — narrow planks with beveled edges.

"Solid," said Qwilleran. "Let's clear more shelves… Ouch!" "Careful! Don't twist your knee, Qwill. Let me do it." Mary got down on her hands and knees and peered under a low shelf. "Qwill, there's an opening in the wall, sure enough." "How big?" "It looks as if a single board is missing." "Can you see what's beyond? Take the flashlight." "There's another wall — about two feet back. It makes a narrow compartment — " "Mary, do you think…?" "Qwill, could this be…?" The idea occurred to them both, simultaneously.

"An Underground Railway station," Qwilleran said.

"Exactly!" she said. "William Towne Spencer built this house." "Many abolitionists — " "Built secret rooms — yes!" "To hide runaway slaves." Mary ducked her head under the shelf again. "It slides!" she called over her shoulder. "The whole panel is a sliding door. There's a robe in here." She pulled out twelve feet of white cord. "And a toothbrush!" "Yow!" said Koko, making a sudden appearance in the beam of the flashlight. He stepped out from his hideaway and staggered a little as he gave a delicate shudder.

"Close the panel," Qwilleran directed. "Can you close it?" "All but half an inch. It seems to be warped." "I'll bet Koko opened the panel with his claws, and Yum Yum followed him through. She's the one who did the fetching and carrying…. Well, that solves one mystery. How about a cup of coffee?" "Thanks, no. I must go home. I'm wrapping Christmas presents." Mary stopped short. "You've been emptying your desk! Are you moving out?" "Only the desk is moving. I sold it this afternoon for seven hundred and fifty dollars." "Qwill, you didn't! It's worth two hundred dollars at most." He showed her the log of his afternoon session in The Junkery. "Not bad for a greenhorn, is it?" "Who is this woman who wanted Sheffield candlesticks?" Mary asked, as she scanned the report. "You should have sent her to me…. And who was asking for horse brasses? No one buys horse brasses any more." "What are they?" "Brass medallions for decorating harnesses. The English used to use them as good luck tokens…. Who's the customer who got kissed? That's a devious way to sell a tin knife box." "She's the wife of our feature editor," Qwilleran said. "By the way, I've brought a present for Arch Riker — just a joke. Would you gift-wrap it for me?" He handed Mary the rusty tobacco tin.

"I hope," she said, reading the price tag inside the cover, "that the Weird Sisters didn't charge you ten dollars for this." "Ten dollars?" Qwilleran felt an uncomfortable sensation on his upper lip. "They were asking ten, but they gave it to me for five." "That's not bad. Most shops get seven-fifty." Gulping his chagrin, Qwilleran escorted her down the stairs, and as they passed Ben's open door he asked, "Does the Bit o' Junk do a good business?" "Not particularly," she replied. "Ben is too lazy to go out looking for things, so his turnover is slow." "He took me to The Lion's Tail last night, and he was throwing money around as if he had his own printing press." Mary shrugged. "He must have had a windfall. Once a year a dealer can count on a windfall — like selling a roll-top desk for seven hundred and fifty dollars. That's one of the great truths of the antique business." "By the way," Qwilleran said, "we went scrounging at the Garrick last night, but all that was left was a crest on one of the boxes, and I almost broke my neck trying to get it" "Ben should have warned you. That box has been unsafe for years." "How do you know?" "The city engineers condemned it in the 1940s and ordered it padlocked. It's called the Ghost Box." "Do you think Ben knew about it?" "Everyone knows about it," Mary said. "That's why the crest was never taken. Even Russ Patch refused to risk it, and he's a daredevil." After Qwilleran had watched her return to her own house, he climbed the stairs pensively. At the top of the flight the cats were waiting for him in identical poses, sitting tall with brown tails arranged in matching curves. One inch of tail tip lifted inquiringly.

"You scroundrels!" Qwilleran said. "I suppose you've been having a whale of a time, coming and going through the walls like a couple of apparitions." Koko stropped his jaw on the newel post, his tiny ivory tusks clicking against the ancient mahogany. "Want to go and have your teeth cleaned?" the man asked him. "After Christmas I'll take you to a cat dentist." Koko rubbed the back of his head on the newel post — an ingratiating gesture.

"Don't pretend innocence. You don't fool me for a minute." Qwilleran roughed up the sleek fur along the cat's fluid backbone. "What else have you been doing behind my back? What are you planning to do next?" That was Wednesday night. Thursday morning Qwilleran got his answer.

Just before daylight he turned in his bed and found his nose buried in fur. Yum Yum was sharing his pillow. Her fur smelled clean. Qwilleran's mind went back forty-odd years to a sunny backyard with laundry flapping on the clothesline. The clean wash smelled like sunshine and fresh air, and that was the fragrance of this small animal's coat.

From the kitchen came a familiar sound: "Yawwck!" It was Koko's good-morning yowl combined with a wake-up yawn, and it was followed by two thumps as the cat jumped down from refrigerator to counter to floor. When he walked into the living room, he stopped in the middle of the carpet and pushed his forelegs forward, his hind quarters skyward, in an elongated stretch. After that he stretched a hind leg — just the left one — very carefully. Then he approached the swan bed and ordered breakfast in clarion tones.

The man made no move to get out of bed but reached out a teasing hand. Koko sidestepped it and rubbed his brown mask against the corner of the bed. He crossed the room and rubbed the leg of the book cupboard. He walked to the Morris chair and stropped his jaw on its square corners.

"Just what do you think you're accomplishing?" Qwilleran asked.

Koko ambled to the pot-bellied stove and looked it over, then selected the latch of the ashpit door and ground his jaw against it. He scraped the left side of his jaw; he scraped the right side. And the shallow door clicked and swung ajar.

The door opened only a hair's-breadth, but Koko pried it farther with an inquisitive paw.

In a split second Qwilleran was out of bed and bending over the ashpit. It was full of papers — typewritten sheets — a stack of them two inches thick, neatly bound in gray folders. They had been typed on a machine with a loose E — a faulty letter that jumped above the line.